On a recent busy Sunday afternoon, folks were stopping by to enjoy one of the 300 craft beers he stocks. Many patrons were hanging out at a long bar that stretches most of the length of the long narrow bowling alley like space.

Johnson hails from Eastern Pennsylvania and he’s been in Rhinebeck since 2002. He’s owned and managed the place since 2012.

“My wife does the behind-the-scenes stuff like marketing,” he said.

Grand Cru is his first business venture. “I’m an ex-scientist turned beer guy.”

He said he chose the name “Grand Cru” because it is often used by breweries and wineries for a special release that is often only brought out once a year.

Johnson said he happened on Grand Cru simply by luck as a friend of his was looking to sell it

“He wanted out the business, so I was able to acquire it.”

He said it has taken a lot of work and long hours to be in the craft beer business.

But he said he always enjoys the opportunity to educate his customers about the ins and outs of craft beer.

“I hear people say they don’t like beer,” he said. “I tell them you haven’t had the right beer.”

He said most people associate beer with light yellow mass-produced beer that dominated the beer market for decades.

“After Prohibition there were only 13 breweries left in the United States,” he said. “Now there are 1.2 new breweries opening every day,”

For many years, beer from the United States was considered to be inferior to beer from European countries like Belgium, but now that’s starting to change, he said.

“People are getting turned onto better beer and their willing to spend a little extra for a better product,” he said.

Price points range from $1.40 up to a Belgian lambic at $8 a bottle.

Johnson is always experimenting with mixing different beers to get a new flavor, he said as he was mixing a Raspberry lambic with a double chocolate stout to get a mixture he describes as “dessert in a glass,”

He said he began drinking craft beer when it was a nascent movement in the 1990s that saw small breweries starting to spring up, many of them in large ski resort towns.

A visit to Grand Cru will unveil a crowd of drinkers far different than the stereotypical young male crowd found in commercials for the big three breweries, he said.

Contrary to stereotypes about wine being a women’s drink and beer being a man’s drink, he said he gets about a 50 percent male 50 percent female crowd, he said.

“And it’s not just women going along with their boyfriend,” he said. “We get a group of guys and then we get a group of girls.”

Drinkers who want to pair bear and cheese, can get help finding just the right cheese, all from New York, he said. And on top of cheese, they can choose from sausages like chorizo, venison jerky, or the always popular almond brittle.

Johnson said he’s working on a partnership with a local brewery to make a proprietary brew exclusive to Grand Cru.

He said his special events like live music are also very popular.

About once a month, some tables make way for a small space for live music, he said.

‘We do acoustic duos,” he said. “We bring in really good professional musicians and a few amateurs as well,” he said

Approximately every three weeks The Grand Cru Tasting team brings in representatives from a different craft brewery to share their brews and stories with Grand Cru customers.

On a beautiful, but cool Sunday afternoon, a throng of regulars was inside the Grand Cru to taste selections from Rushing Duck a craft brewery in Chester in Orange County.

Rushing Duck Brewery was started by New Jersey native Dan Hitchcock, who said he began homebrewing in college. Later, Hitchcock said he moved from New Jersey to Orange County and started “Rushing Duck,” which he co-owns with his fiance Nikki Cavanaugh.

He said he came to the Hudson Valley because it has a great beer culture and, for an aspiring brewer, New York has a lot less red tape to circumvent than New Jersey. “I love the Hudson Valley and I love beer, so it’s perfect,” he said.

He said he came to Grand Cru because it’s one of his best accounts, and he always enjoys getting out to talk to his customers face to face.

Rushing Duck’s specialities are a hoppy American pale ale called Naysayer Pale Ale, War Elephant Double IPA, and Beanhead Coffee Porter, which blends the flavor of coffee and beer, he said.

He said the name Rushing Duck comes from a phrase that is a creation of his grandfather, who lived in Hoboken after the Prohibition era.

“Back then there were pretty lax open-container laws so you could walk into a bar and get any kind of container filled to go,” he said. “Him and his friends had a metal pail they called the duck, so the act of going to the bar to get it filled was called ‘rushing the duck.’”